No overtime for property crime investigations through the end of the year, according to internal memo.
By Erica C. Barnett
The Seattle Police Department is running so far over its overtime budget this year that officers have been barred from taking overtime except “to respond to urgent life safety events, address chronic public safety issues, or meet time sensitive administrative, contractual, or legal requirements (e.g., court appearances),” according to a November 18 memo.
“SPD must drastically reduce its overtime usage and costs in the remaining weeks of the year to address a projected budget overrun,” the memo reads. “To that end, ALL overtime usage must be pre-approved at the Assistant Chief / Executive Director level, including overtime in authorized categories.” (Emphasis in original).
For the rest of the year, according to the memo, SPD will not fund overtime for property crime investigations, including burglary and theft—effectively deprioritizing property crimes through the end of 2025. Police also can’t use overtime to investigate nonviolent drug crimes, attend community meetings, or work at the Real-Time Crime Center, among many other types of work for which officers routinely rack up overtime hours.
Other types of overtime—from homicide investigations to parking enforcement—will have to be approved directly by a member of Barnes’ command staff.
It’s unclear how SPD ended up spending down its overtime budget so much faster than planned.
SPD’s media relations team, headed by Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis, did not respond to detailed questions about the directive sent last week.
SPD routinely overshoots the overtime budget it receives from the city. The 2025 city budget included an additional $12.8 million for overtime, bringing SPD’s overtime budget to more than $53 million. That’s about $8 million more than the city spends on the entire Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team, a group of social workers who are authorized to respond to a limited number of 911 calls that don’t require police.
The extra overtime money still fell short, and even with an anticipated fundingboost from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s final supplemental budget, SPD was already planning to “absorb” 11,000 extra hours—about $1.2 million—by “repurposing unused funding from other parts of the budget,” according to a budget memo.
All those extra hours didn’t just go to patrol and crime investigations. Officers get paid overtime, plus a $225 premium, for working at special events and directing traffic outside sports stadiums—work that doesn’t need to be done by cops, but is guaranteed in their contract.
At a public budget meeting in September, Police Chief Shon Barnes defended SPD’s use of overtime, saying it was conceivable that the department will need less overtime in the future, as more new officers are hired and trained, “but because we’re in a very busy city, we do have a lot of special projects and priorities that we’re, quite frankly, trying to manage, and most of them today we are managing with overtime. … And it does take time… at best, a year before an officer, or maybe two years, before that [new] officer has fully realized [their] potential.”
Next year’s SPD budget actually assumes police will use less overtime—450,000 hours—than in previous years. A budget memo earlier this year noted that this was probably an unrealistic goal, given SPD’s tendency to use more overtime than it initially requests, and noted that if SPD continues to use its typical amount of overtime, the department will run up a $5.5 million deficit.
The city council, which includes several members who promised to “audit the budget” for waste when they ran in 2023, passed an amendment requiring SPD to include overtime data in its quarterly hiring reports “when available.”
What this graph says is that SPD yearly pays out the equivalent of 750,000 normal pay hours in the form of overtime, which is like 300+ hourly FTE positions, or closer to 200 positions with benefits. Surely Seattle is innovative enough to develop a force that is just as much about keeping the peace as it is about arresting the baddies.
As a former head of City Light’s line crews said during one of the “budget crises” of the past, “Do what you want, when a storm comes you’ll give me the overtime I need.” And he wasn’t wrong. If anyone reading this article thinks city departments, including but not limited to SPD, aren’t going to bleed OT during FIFA next summer … buckle up cupcake.
Thank the Defund the Police former Seattle City Council for causing this. The shortage of police officers caused a necessary increase in overtime.
How much SPD budget was cut in the “defund” movement!
Announcer: zilch.
“Oh wait, we’ve *already* spent that money allocated to un-hired police positions?”
Gee what could the guy who’s been mayor for four years and the Council elected on a platform of Fiscal Rectitude have done about this….? Hmmm…
“In the San Jose Police Department, the CSO [Community Service Officer] position was born out of a shortage of police officers. “We had to do it to meet minimum staffing on the street every day in patrol without spending a ton of overtime,” according to Acting Chief Paul Joseph. “
it’s all about sabotaging the new mayor
Interesting editorial in the Seattle times last week end
Here’s what my neighborhood would like from Katie Wilson
By DAVID AMSCHLER- Special to The Seattle Times
I’m a father, a husband, a veteran and a longtime blue-collar resident of Seattle who has watched this city change in ways that have left many feeling unheard, unprotected and honestly, forgotten.
This isn’t about politics. It’s not about left or right. It’s about the reality families like mine live with every day. It’s about the neighborhoods we raise our kids in, the homes we work so hard to afford and the basic sense of safety that every resident should be able to count on.
I love Seattle. But what’s happening here is breaking people down.
In many parts of this city, crime has become expected instead of shocking. Car prowls, open drug use, stolen vehicles, shoplifting, catalytic converter thefts, burglary, unsafe encampments — we’ve reached a point where most of these crimes are met with no consequences.
One person we spoke with after they experienced a break-in said something I’ll never forget: “He that feels no consequence behaves with no respect.”
That is Seattle right now in one sentence.
Compassion matters. Helping people matters. But there is a point where compassion without boundaries stops being compassion and becomes neglect, neglect of the very people who have held this city together.
Compassion is great, but we’ve had enough compassion without accountability. It’s time to restore balance between helping people in need and protecting the people who live here. We can care deeply about human beings while still expecting behavior that doesn’t destroy neighborhoods. Those two things should not be treated as opposites.
Encampments and RVs are shuffled from one neighborhood to another. Sometimes they’re cleared, sometimes they return a week later. Residents install ecoblocks out of desperation, not cruelty, because they feel like no one is listening to them.
No one feels good about any of this — not the homeowners, not the housed, not the unhoused, not the business owners. This isn’t a solution.
It’s a rotation.
Right now, the Seattle Police Department has one of the lowest ratios of officers per capita in the country. And it shows. We rarely see patrol cars. We rarely see traffic stops. We rarely see someone held accountable for even obvious, visible crimes.
Residents joke, sadly, that the moment you leave Seattle and drive into Shoreline, you suddenly see police everywhere. In stores. In parking lots. On the streets. Doing traffic stops. It shouldn’t be normal that seeing a police officer means you’ve left Seattle. We’re not asking for aggressive policing. We’re asking for basic policing.
My wife and I are raising a young child. We both work long hours.
We’re trying to build a stable life.
We’re trying to live in a city we once believed in. But it’s becoming harder and harder to feel safe, protected, or supported.
Families shouldn’t have to explain to kids why people are openly using drugs at bus stops. We shouldn’t have to pray that no one breaks into our car again. Working families like mine are doing everything we can to keep our heads up.
We need our city to meet us halfway.
We are not asking for the impossible.
We are asking for three basic things:
1. Accountability for behavior that harms others: Compassion cannot survive without structure.
Helping people is noble. Allowing chaos is not.
2. A police department that can actually respond to residents: Even a small increase in presence would change how neighborhoods feel overnight.
3. A real, long-term plan for homelessness that does more than relocate people: We need housing, treatment, outreach, and yes, expectations and rules.
I believe this city can be better than what it’s become. People like me — the blue-collar families, the veterans, the workers, the parents, the folks who stay here through all the hard times — we need to be heard.
We need safety.
We need accountability.
We need our city back.
And I hope Katie Wilson is the leader who helps us get there.
David Amschler lives in Ballard
Sorry David. These problems require money — something Seattle refuses to raise or spend. Voters (see the most recent Chamber of Commerce city council and departing mayor) just want to chase homeless folks from one neighborhood to another. Hopefully that changes, but we’re too libertarian (weed, gay rights, no income tax) as opposed to liberal.